Friday, August 31, 2012

Uganda’s foreign exchange earnings from tourism have increased from $662m (about sh1,655b) to $805m (about sh2,012.5b) over the last one year, the outgoing tourism minister, Prof. Ephraim Kamuntu, has said.

Kamuntu also said the contribution of tourism to Uganda’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) had increased from 7.6% in May last year to 9.2% today.

Kamuntu, now water and environment minister, revealed this while handing over office to the new tourism minister, Maria Mutagamba, on Wednesday. Mutagamba has been water and environment minister for close to 12 years.

Saturday, August 25, 2012

The number of tourists coming to
Uganda from the UK and Ireland has surpassed previous years’ records
despite the recent Ebola outbreak.

A statement from the Uganda High
Commission in London said there were increased applications for Uganda
immigration entry visas averaging about 50 applications per day. The
peak was in May-June when applications reached the 80 per day mark.

Buffaloes in Queen Elizabeth National Park

The outgoing High Commissioner,
Joan Rwabyomere, attributed this to the prevailing peace in the country
and the distinctive attraction of Uganda as a tourist destination
arising out of the variety of its game stock and its unspoilt scenic
beauty.

She
noted that the tourism industry had grown enormously in Uganda with
clearly visible features including improved service delivery, facilities
and awareness.

Uganda generally has substantial
natural resources for tourism with a variety of landscape and
ecosystems, climates and cultures.

Rwabyomere added that the Uganda Mission had the capacity to process the high numbers of applications.

Individual
and group applications are processed in one working day with collection
being on the next day between 11:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. Applications
received through the Post take up to a week to be processed.

Tourism in Uganda is an important generator of foreign exchange, high-end employment, and investment.

According
to the World Economic Forum, the sector contributed over shs1.5
trillion ($660m), 8 per cent contribution to Gross Domestic Product in
2010.

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Today I discuss you about Black and white colobus species. This type of monkey is found in high altitude tropical forests in Uganda like Kibale, Bwindi, and Budongo.

I
think you do not have an idea what it is. Ok here let me tell you, the
Black-and-white colobus animals are found in Africa, often in tropical
rainforests.

This species provide important functions in their ecosystems,
comnsuming plant matter and serving as prey for various mammals as leopards,
bird of prey, and reptiles. It is one of the most endangered species of African
primates and the king colobus also is considered to be highly endangered.

Uganda's black and white colobus - www.gorillasandwildlifesafaris.com

It is
very arboreal and jumps long distance between branches. As for the size of this
species, it is a small with a U-shaped mantle of long white fur that descends
from its shoulders and around its back. The average body mass for an adult male
abyssinian black-and-white colobus monkey is around 14.5 kilograms and for the
female it is around 6.2 kilograms. This is a sexually dimorphic species. The
tail of this animals is long and white colored. The infants are born all white
then start turning at about 3 months. As for their diet, they are strictly
leaf-eaters and spend most of their time in treetops, preferring to eat the
tender young leaves found there.

Saturday, August 4, 2012

To say that my trip to Uganda was life-changing would be too
simplistic. After traveling from California half way around the world to
meet our sponsored families face to face, it's difficult to express
just how much the experience has changed our lives.

Our entire family is passionate about the children we sponsor, but
only one of us could go and visit. Thanks to a mobile phone, Skype and
my iPad, I was able to take my family with me and also connect our
sponsored children to my family back home. By posting photos, short
videos and updates to Facebook during the week, I was also able to bring
along all of the other ChildFund sponsors who were following the trip.

Now that I'm back from Uganda, my family has begun re-evaluating our
entire lifestyle. The abundance that surrounds us has been hard to
accept -- from adjusting the temperature of my house so that I can be
more comfortable, to getting a glass of water for my son because he's
thirsty. The luxuries that my family takes for granted remind me of how
much we have, how much more we could share and how much more I could be
doing to help.

Our easy access to water compared to the lack of access that is
commonplace among our sponsored families and the people of their
communities is a subject that plays on my mind. There was a moment in
Uganda when our team was inspecting area water sources. It was
overwhelming to see the mass of women and children gathered at the "bore
hole" to pump water into plastic containers to carry back to their
homes. During our travels, I saw these containers stacked several high
on motorcycles, transported by bicycle and carried on the heads of
little children.

Seeing the vessels being filled, people taking turns, children
holding children, was heartbreaking and heartwarming. I didn't just see
their struggle. I witnessed their work ethic and the cooperation that
existed among family members and the community at large. I just felt sad
that there wasn't more I could do. I was given a chance to try my hand
at pumping. At the onset, it seemed pretty simple, but the longer I
pumped, the heavier and harder it became, and the more tedious. For
many, this is a daily or twice-daily chore.

Later we visited a nearly dried-up spring where villagers scoop up
water with small pitchers to pour into larger containers. We happened on
a little boy who had just finished filling his plastic jugs. He was not
big enough to carry them and was preparing to pull them on a plastic
makeshift sled along the trail to his village. The boy was 6 or 7 years
old, and when I looked at him, I thought of my own children. As he
started to pull his sled, one of the containers tipped. I scooped up the
jug, grabbed the other as well, and just started walking. I couldn't
change the world, but I could make this little guy's day a little
easier. He looked at me, startled, and I pointed over to where I thought
he was heading. Through the field, over the
hill, around the bushes...I was surprised by the distance to Maxwell's
home.

The exciting thing about this chance meeting was that I knew my
sister-in-law's family wanted to sponsor another child, but were
waiting until I got back, just in case I found someone. I had the
enormous pleasure of meeting Maxwell's mother and telling her that we
had found a sponsor for her little girl. The joy and love I saw in this
mother's eyes as she ran into her hut to get her child's enrollment
information and number was just overwhelming.

There's a popular story that my family likes to tell about a man who
comes upon thousands of starfish washed up on the beach, slowly
dying out of reach of the water. He is tossing them one at a time back
into the water, when another man walks by and tells him that he can't
possibly save them all. The man bends down, and picks up another
starfish and says in reply, "No, but I can save this one."

Thursday, August 2, 2012

The first time I tried to use that popular saying ‘Kampala sibizimbe’ (Kampala isn't just the towers), I got it wrong. I said Kampala sizimbe, much to the amusement of my mean relatives.

Things are hard and you’ve got to be creative to survive. My version of ‘sizimbe’ also works, if you open your mind up a little but you know, whatever.

I like people who hustle. Let me rephrase that for honesty. I like men who hustle. I’m pretty ambitious myself (although not as rabidly as say, two years ago) because I’ve already realised my childhood dream; which was to write in the same ‘paper area’ as Ernest Bazanye.

If you’re my age (and as sharp as I am), your mind started to flower just about when he started writing, so you can understand how glorious and unattainable that goal seemed to me. Whatever hustling that had to be done for me to achieve it got done and now I’m relaxing a bit.

Give me a man with good hustle-sense and you can keep the dowry. Dowry exists mostly to show a girl’s parents that the family she is marrying into can take care of her in as grand a way as she’s accustomed to or even grander.

If he can chase deals and dream up businesses, he’s a good enough substitute. I’m supportive of every kind of hustle until it infringes on my own. If, for example, I were in a hurry to get to a meeting on the other side of town, I wouldn’t expect my boda man to behave the way my friend Roger did.

I would react with a lot of annoyance in fact. Roger once flagged down a boda to take him from Greenland Towers to Kamwokya. He hadn’t even finished stating the amount he was willing to pay when the man started riding at a high speed.

It is only when they reached Wandegeya that he turned and asked,“Mpozzi where are you going?” When Roger said Kamwokya, he killed the engine and told him to get off.

Eyo sigendayo. Asked why he’d allowed him to board in the first place, the man replied:

“They beat people at that Greenland stage! If you stop nga you don’t belong there? I stopped for you because banange, Kampala sibizimbe. I also need money!”

And it’s not only boda types that have taken hustling to insane levels. Even not so desperate people with steady allowances are capable of hitting you over the head with the silliest schemes. My cousin once tried to sell drinking water to members of the household.

He took the jerry cans off the dining table and held them hostage, smiling smugly at everybody who came from the kitchen with a cup. He demanded a sum, any sum the thirsty person was willing to pay. Later, he tried to pretend that he’d been trying to teach us life lessons, to make us really think about capitalism and how it has turned humanity’s most basic of needs into a thing to be exchanged for money, but we were on to him.

Tiny children and their mothers flooded Kampala’s streets a few years ago. No longer contented with just chasing after you in the hope of making a few hundred shillings, they threaten. Some say they’ll spit, and others even wave handfuls of feces in your direction, to inspire your generosity.

This is terrible, but also impressive. They’ve turned begging into an art, a real hustle.

The gorillas have not been spotted since fighting erupted three months ago.

The
regular army has been battling a mutiny in the eastern Democratic
Republic of Congo, where lies part of the Virunga Massif that is home to
the world’s largest community of mountain gorillas.

The park’s
director Emmanuel de Merode said in a statement that the army and the
so-called M23 rebels had allowed the rangers to launch search operations
for the missing primates in rebel-held territory.

“On Tuesday 24
July, a team of 45 rangers will begin a multi-day operation to find and
monitor the condition of six mountain gorilla families, some which have
not been seen for over 10 weeks,” the statement said.

“We are
delighted and relieved that all sides in the conflict have recognised
the need to protect Congo’s only mountain gorillas,” de Merode said.

The
Virunga volcanoes conservation area straddles DR Congo, Rwanda and
Uganda and is home to 480 of the world’s 790 remaining mountain
gorillas. Their cause was made famous by US zoologist Dian Fossey, who
was murdered in 1985.

The danger of extinction facing the
mountain gorillas, whose natural habitat is threatened by expanding
human settlements, is increased by chronic conflict and poaching.

“After
locating the gorilla families, the park’s gorilla monitoring teams will
individually identify each member of the family,” the statement said.

“Their health status will also be assessed as mountain gorillas are particularly vulnerable to disease,” it added.

Former
rebels named after the failed March 23, 2009 peace deal which saw them
integrate the Congolese army defected this year and regrouped in the
Virunga before launching an attack on towns in the eastern Nord-Kivu
region.

With Kinshasa and Kigali trading accusations of backing
eachother’s rebels and weeks of conflict displacing hundreds of
thousands of civilians since April, DR Congo and Rwanda agreed to the
principle of an international force monitoring their border.